Thursday, January 15, 2009

The Mormon Church may lose their tax-exempt status over their overwhelming financial and social support for proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California. The video below shows the evidence of support by the LDS church including an audio record of the elders plans to pass proposition 8.

21 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Another concern and I feel valid point, are the thousands of LDS members who donated tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars to the hate campaign...at the behest of church elders. All of the money contributed to Prop 8's defeat wasn't written from the LDS Corporate check book.

That audio clip, as much as I would like it to be real, was FAKE...This is trash. There is no way that the LDS Church would go down. Stop wasting energy trying to "get back" at who funded the campaign and do something proactive to change it. It is time for the movement to start playing offense...

wordhorder, could you present some evidence that the clip was fake? I'm not so sure that the LDS Church won't take a hit... There's a lot of people who don't like the Mormans (gay and straight).I do agree with your comment to be proactive. I just don't understand why we can do both, be proactive AND point out the LDS Church violated California Law and possibly IRS Regulations.

I read the forum (thefoyer.org) that did the transcription and I can tell you that it is definitely accurate. It was recorded, transcribed and on the internet within a few days of the broadcast. Both the recording and the transcription are freely available.

I think the IRS does have a set standard:"A church or religious organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation if it contacts, or urges the public to contact, members or employees of a legislative body for the purpose of proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation, or if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation."

"However, for their organizations to remain tax exempt under IRC section 501(c)(3), religious leaders cannot make partisan comments in official organization publications or at official church functions. To avoid potential attribution of their comments outside of church functions and publications, religious leaders who speak or write in their individual capacity are encouraged to clearly indicate that their comments are personal and not intended to represent the views of the organization. The following are examples of situations involving endorsementsby religious leaders."

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1828.pdf

It seems pretty clear to me the Mormon Church has violated the tax exempt laws.

Sacgary I wish it was that easy, there is some limited lobbying organizations can do on behalf of issues. It also isn't clear whether they can take a stance on a proposition as it isn't a candidate. The question is financially what is the limit for a non profit, is it 10 million, 50 million, is it 2%, 5% of their worth, I mean who knows? This case may be the one that forces the IRS to set standards.

I'm pretty sure that since it was something to do with politics, they can't openly voice their opinion on the matter. As SacGray said:

"A church or religious organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation if it contacts, or urges the public to contact, members or employees of a legislative body for the purpose of proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation, or if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation."

This is a site of opinions. The only legitimate thing on here is the link to a government document. If the clip is real, it is of little point. If you look through the web, the only places that you will find this type of response to such a video, is on similar sites like this one. These are all public opinion sites. The real news is that the LDS Church has been put up for review of conduct, and to provide access to documentation. Time to get past this so called "proof" and let the decision be made by the people who are the most able to give an accurate one. The lawyers will hash this out until they release an actual news feed. Only after that comes out will there be any access to the real proof of violation. As such, this is my OPINION. There will be people who agree with me, and then there will be people who will hate me for my comments. They will both voice their opinions. This does not make it fact, just folklore. I have gay friends, I have straight friends, I have religious friends. They are all people with their own opinions. I do not always agree with them, but I do not call an opinion proof of anything.

People should stop blaming the Mormons for this. At the end of the day the No campaign spent 37.6 million and the Yes campaign spent 35.8 million. If Mormons donated a disproportionate amount to the Yes campaign, then democracy should be thanking them for making it a fair fight and allowing it to come down to the people instead of the money. If someone is looking for people to blame they should be blaming the voters of California.

Also the IRS question of substantial is relative to church's overall expenditures and not external perceptions. I don't think that the help the church gave to the yes campaign can really be defined as a substantial part of its overall activities considering that it has over 10 million members and most of what it has been doing and spending its money on this year has nothing to do with Prop 8. If you want to read the actual language of the IRS instead of hearing it distorted by a video, here's the link (it’s like 4 paragraphs): http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=96099,00.html

There is also more hatred posted on this website than anything published by the "religious right." Mormons don't hate gay people just because you say they do.

Anonymous if Mormons who donated to prop 8 don't hate us, why do they continue to stigmatize us and not allow us to take care of our families. Why should they have a tax exempt status as a Church while we are forced to pay more taxes for being gay. Religion is a choice, homosexuality is not. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

It's fairly ridiculous for a person to fail to give even a semi-trackable made-up screen name to then go on and on lecturing the locals and other guests about anything at all.

The last three "Anonymous" postfuls of crap and nonsense posted just before this comment are exactly how the federal "DOMA" was pushed through by GOPher legislatures (signed by Clinton as punishment for trying to eliminate DADT), how Prop. 22 was pushed through with religious fanatacism and greedy GOPhers taking full advantage of the idiots, and how Prop. 8 was too.

Blather, blather, blather, tidbit of actual information but not about "us", blather overkill, all the time bashing "us" without providing a shred of a fact against "us" as evidence that "we" or our marriages are or would be a bad thing for the state or anyone else.

The only gripe "they" can bring to the California Supreme Court or the SCOTUS is the two-part whine they lost on last time.

Religious objections and bad for the kids.

Since the government doesn't operate according to anyone's religious beliefs, and there is no evidence that "us" being married is bad for the kids (or harms the state in any way), "they" will lose again.

Meanwhile, "they" will fund more campaigns of psychological and mental terrorism against "us", in California and in throughout the nation and the world. They can afford to do this because they pay no taxes and they have plenty of money. They need to be forced to spend their money on things which do not harm "us".

So, directly thanks to "their" efforts -- directed from Rome, Utah, Colorado and Washington, D.C., and squeezing their tiny sock puppets around the world for more money and votes -- now it's a good thing that California's state Constitution intentionally mentions for the first time that certain people in the state are not equal because they are a certain kind of people.

That's only one of the three tragedies from the presidential election. Hey, one time, we had six major state-level losses! Remember that one?

Isn't passivity fun?

I am very proud of those who put feet to concrete and joined us out in the streets.

As for me, well, golly, looks like Nurse Ratchet is on the way with my meds. I can hardly wait.

Homosexuality is a mental disease and the fact that a majority of Californians voted on prop 8 makes me proud that I live in a country where peoples opinions count. As for you're families? You are living in sin as is said in the book of Genesis,when God destroyed the two villages for conducting themselves the way that you guys are. May God have mercy on your souls and I pray that you find the error of your ways before it is time to stand judgement.

The only error in judgement is yours, I will pray for you for hating and misunderstanding the diversity among God's children. Sodom and Gommorah had nothing to do with homosexuality, it is never even mention. God destroyed it for its wickedness, wickedness that you are demonstrating here. I hope you find that God loves all people and that love whether gay or straight is a manifestation of God's glory.

The LDS MORMONS really feel GAY PEOPLE will contaminate there LDS Mormon MEMBERS

"We do not intend to admit to our campus any homosexuals. If any of you have this tendency and have not completely abandoned it, may I suggest that you leave the university immediately after this assembly...We do not want others on this campus to be contaminated by your presence." (Ernest Wilkinson, president of Brigham Young University, in a 1965 lecture to the BYU student body, titled: "Make Honor your Standard."